Posts Tagged ‘Amnesia Fortnight’

One of the best ideas in videogames today, Hack ‘n’ Slash, has broken out of Early Access and is running amok on Steam proper. It’s a Zelda-like 2D adventure with the ability to modify the code of many of the objects in the world. This is used for, in equal measure, puzzle solving and comedy, able to unlock doors or make NPCs endlessly rotate on the spot. This release version also brings the last chapter of the game, filled with new puzzles and mechanics, as well as updating previous areas with more content. Naturally, a game so meta also shipped with the source code and now has Steam Workshop support, letting us dig deeper into its innards.

The first thing that happens in Hack ‘N’ Slash is the player is given a weapon, a sword, and then it breaks. Beneath the sword’s external stabby part is a USB interface. A smarter person would point out how this is a microcosm of the game, because you solve puzzles by peeling away the game’s outer layer to manipulate the code beneath the surface. Me? I’ll just lazily use it as a way of introducing the concept and then hop into the game proper. Oh, and I’ll also say it’s great.

Double Fine’s annual fortnight of pausing all their other work to focus on creating original prototypes has begun. With the pitches whittled down to four, the studio is now divided up into groups to create those games over the next two weeks. And you can watch a lot of it happening. Below.

Amnesia Fortnight moves pretty fast. One week ago Double Fine’s yearly-except-when-busy publicly voted game prototype jam started with 31 pitch videos. Now backers have had time to vote, that list has been whittled down to the four games that are going to be developed into a prototype. The winners? Steed, Mnemonic, Dear Leader and Adventure Time creator Pendleton “the person I would most like to meet” Ward’s Little Pink Best Buds.

Amnesia Fortnight is two weeks every year during which Double Fine allow their entire staff to pitch and make game prototypes, with the goal of eventually expanding a few of those games, and maybe turning some into a full retail release. It’s the process through which Costume Quest and Stacking were born; it was opened to public voting and documenting last year, birthing Spacebase; and it’s now back for another while around.

As per last year, that means you can buy your way into the process via a pay-what-you-want Humble page. That let’s you vote on which of the 31 prototypes get developed (including 4 by Adventure Time creator Pendleton Ward), and perhaps most excitingly lets you watch the 2 Player documentaries of the entire process.

I’ve embedded Double Fine’s introductory video a few of the best pitch videos and trailers for a couple of games below.Read the rest of this entry »

Oh Double Fine, you clever masters of language’s darkest arts, I see – and indeed, understand the true ramifications – of what you did there. You said a thing that sounded like one thing, but it actually meant something entirely different. How cunning, how deceptive. Language, my friends, will never be the same. The Amnesia-Fortnight-born Hack ‘N’ Slash isn’t a top-down action-packed hack-and-slash at all. Instead, it’s an adventure puzzler about hacking – like, with computers and stuff. What’s next? An RPG about rocket-propelled grenades? A Metroidvania that’s actually Metroid and Castlevania duct-taped together? A shooter that’s about shooing-away Ters, whatever those are? This is a brave new world.

Double Fine have collected up their Amnesia Fortnight prototypes (a two week period where they crafted games voted for by the public) and are selling them as physical and digital editions. The $10 digital pack contains the prototypes Autonomous, Black Lake (pictured), Hack ‘N’ Slash, Spacebase DF-9, and the White Birch, as well as previous prototypes for Brazen, Happy Song, and Costume Quest.

Double Fine’s crowd-funding / PWYW bundle / rapid prototyping / community voting idea-cocktail Amnesia Fornight has just proceeded to its next stage – choosing, via public vote, the four concepts that will be turned into working, playable games. I want to play all of them so I’m happy, but see if they’re Your Sort Of Thing below.Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday you’ll likely have noticed that Tim Schafer and Double Fine launched a new approach to a Humble Bundle, encouraging people to pay what they want for the chance to vote on what four prototypes the team would develop during their next Amnesia Fortnight. We then brought you his thoughts on why they were doing this, and what impact such things have on the studio. In the second part of our chat, we discuss how Schafer’s time is split between the Double Fine Adventure and running such a busy studio, the effect his project had on the Kickstarter phenomenon, why he thinks you make more money without DRM, and Schafer’s belief in what he calls the “good faith” of gamers.

As we just mentioned, Double Fine have launched a unique Humble Bundle to let people vote from 23 game pitches to decide four that will go on to be made into prototypes. I spoke to Tim Schafer earlier this evening to ask how this came about, and how such a thing will influence the company. In this first half of the interview we talk about the Bundle, what makes a Double Fine game, and why they’re so keen to show these early stages of game development.

Double Fine’s Amnesia Fortnight has become a fairly well known event by the developer. For two weeks every year, everyone at the company stops what they’re working on, and get together in small teams to create prototypes for new game ideas. And since 2009, all the games the studio have released have been born from these creative weeks. The likes of Costume Quest and Stacking came out of this elaborate brainstorm. This year they’re doing it differently. “We’re letting the world in on it,” explained studio head Tim Schafer to me this evening, in an interview to appear later tonight. Via Humble Bundle, we get to vote on the 23 pitches to pick the four that will be created as prototypes. And then the whole process of developing will be live-streamed, with the finished projects available to everyone who paid.